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      Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tells fellow Democrats: reject Biden in primary

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      The progressive US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has called on her fellow Michigan Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the state’s presidential primary election – at the expense of the party’s incumbent, Joe Biden – in late February.Appearing in a video posted to X on Saturday by Listen to Michigan, a political campaign to encourage the state’s voters to vote “uncommitted” in the 27 February primary, Tlaib justified her stark display of displeasure with Biden by alluding to Israel’s military strikes on Gaza, which local authorities say have killed nearly 29,000 Palestinians since last October.Tlaib – Congress’s only Palestinian American lawmaker – also criticized the Biden White House’s support for Israel, which launched its military campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October Hamas attacks that killed about 1,200 Israelis.Speaking in front of the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center in Dearborn, which has one of the US’s largest populations of Arab Americans, Tlaib said: “It is important … to not only march against the genocide, not only make sure that we’re calling our members of Congress and local elected [officials], and passing city resolutions all throughout our country. It is also important to create a voting bloc, something that is a bullhorn to say, ‘Enough is enough.’”Tlaib added: “We don’t want a country that supports war and bombs and destruction. We want to support life. We want to stand up for every single life killed in Gaza … This is the way you can raise our voices. Don’t make us even more invisible. Right now, we feel completely neglected and just unseen by our government.“If you want us to be louder, then come here and vote uncommitted” rather than in support of Biden, the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee for November’s presidential election.The congresswoman’s message echoed the calls of Listen to Michigan, whose campaign manager is Tlaib’s sister Layla Elabed.Speaking to Business Insider, Elabed said: “Voting uncommitted is our way of demanding change, and this is going to be our vehicle to return political power back to us.”More than 30 elected officials across south-east Michigan have already pledged to vote “uncommitted” in the state’s 27 February primary elections. Those officials include the Dearborn mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, along with city council members and state representatives.A statement released by Listen to Michigan earlier in February said, “Let us be clear: we unequivocally demand that the Biden administration immediately call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. We must hold our president unaccountable and ensure that we, the American taxpayers, are no longer forced to be accomplices in a genocide that is backed and funded by the United States government.”It also said: “Therefore, we pledge to check the box for ‘uncommitted’ on our ballots in the upcoming presidential primary election. These are not empty words; they signify our steadfast commitment to justice, dignity, and the sanctity of human life, which is greater than loyalty to any candidate or party.”With the 81-year-old president facing increasing pressure over his handling of Israel’s military strikes in Gaza, as well as scrutiny over his age, Arab and Muslim Americans across multiple swing states – including Michigan – have organized campaigns under the slogan #AbandonBiden.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTlaib’s latest video announcement has received mixed responses.The former Ohio Democratic state senator Nina Turner tweeted, “Arab Americans do not want their tax dollars going to kill their family members. It’s unnerving to see the liberal response to that demand. Rashida Tlaib is absolutely justified to endorse this.”Meanwhile, in response to Tlaib’s endorsement of Listen Michigan, the conservative group Republicans Against asked on X who among Democrats would run against the congresswoman ahead of her running for re-election in November.Tlaib last year was censured by the Republican-led US House over her criticisms of Israel. She responded to the censure measure by saying that she would “not be silenced” and that “Palestinian people are not disposable”. More

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      US Senate advances wartime aid package for Ukraine and Israel

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      The Senate on Thursday advanced a wartime aid package for Ukraine and Israel, reviving an effort that had stalled amid Republican opposition to a border security bill they demanded and later abandoned.A day after blocking a measure that would have paired harsh new border restrictions with security assistance for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies, the Senate voted 67 to 32 to begin consideration of the $95bn emergency aid bill. Several Republicans who voted to block the broader border package agreed to open debate on the foreign policy-only version of the measure after securing the opportunity to propose changes, including the immigration enforcement measures that were stripped out.With Kyiv begging Washington for help battling Russian forces on the frontline, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, hailed the preliminary vote as a “good first step”. But its prospects remained unclear as Republicans threatened to force a lengthy amendment process.“Failure to pass this bill would only embolden autocrats like [Russia’s Vladimir] Putin and [China’s] Xi [Jinping], who want nothing more than America’s decline,” Schumer said following the vote. He added: “We are going to keep working on this bill until the job is done.”If the Senate passes the bill it would face further uncertainty in the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority and have been increasingly opposed to sending aid to Ukraine.The new foreign aid package under consideration would include billions of dollars in military assistance for Ukraine and security assistance for Israel with humanitarian assistance for civilians in Ukraine, Gaza and the West Bank. However, it would not include the US border security measures outlined in the bipartisan measure, although some Republican senators expressed interest in adding border provisions through an amendment process.Among them was Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, who voted against advancing the funding measure on Thursday “because I believe we have not done all we can to secure our southern border”.“I enthusiastically support Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel, but as I have been saying for months now, we must protect America first,” the Trump ally said in a statement.The Senate had held an initial vote on the foreign aid package on Wednesday, in which 58 members supported advancing it. That initial motion required only a simple majority for passage, so the bill was able to advance, but 60 votes were needed for advancement on Thursday.There was some apparent uncertainty over how much support the bill had on Wednesday, forcing senators to keep the initial vote on the proposal open for four hours as they debated the best path forward. That evening, Schumer took to the floor to announce that members would reconvene on Thursday to vote on the legislation.“We will recess until tomorrow and give our Republican colleagues the night to figure themselves out,” Schumer said. “We’ll be coming back tomorrow at noon, and hopefully that will give the Republicans the time they need. We will have this vote tomorrow.”Schumer’s comments came hours after the Senate voted 49 to 50 against advancing the bipartisan border bill. Sixty votes were required to start debate on the bill, but 44 Senate Republicans and six of their Democratic colleagues blocked the legislation from moving forward. Just four Senate Republicans – including James Lankford, a Republican of Oklahoma, who helped broker the border deal – supported advancing the bill.Schumer initially supported the bill’s advancement, but he then changed his vote, a procedural maneuver that would allow him to take up the legislation again later. In a floor speech delivered on Wednesday before the vote, Schumer criticized Republicans for opposing the bipartisan bill and accused them of doing Donald Trump’s political bidding. The former president had called on Republicans to oppose the border deal out of concern for how it might affect the presidential race and his campaign’s focus on the issue of immigration.“Donald Trump doesn’t like that the Senate finally reached a bipartisan border deal. So he has demanded Republicans kill it,” Schumer said. “He thinks it’s far better to keep the border in chaos so he can exploit it for personal political gains. And Senate Republicans – vertebrae nowhere to be found – are ready to blunder away our best chance of fixing the border in order to elevate what they see as the interests of Donald Trump above the interests of the country.” More

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      US launches airstrikes on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria, say officials – live

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      US Central Command has said its forces conducted airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and affiliated militia groups.The airstrikes were carried out at 4pm eastern time on Friday, it said.It said US military forces struck more than 85 targets including “command and control operations, centers, intelligence centers, rockets, and missiles, and unmanned aired vehicle storages, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities” belonging to militia groups and their IRGC sponsors.The US had warned it will carry out a series of reprisal strikes launched over more than one day in response to the drone strike over the weekend.The US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, did not specify the timing or precise location of strikes during Pentagon press conference on Thursday, but said:
      We will have a multi-tier response and we have the ability to respond a number of times depending on the situation … We look to hold the people responsible for this accountable and we also seek to take away capability as we go forward.
      Austin insisted that a lot of thought in Washington had gone into ensuring that the US response did not trigger a major escalation.The secretary of defense stressed the US was not at war with Iran and Washington did not know if Tehran was aware of the specific drone strikes on Sunday mounted by what he described as the axis of resistance.Three rounds of airstrikes targeted Iranian militia positions in parts of Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.There have been casualties as a result, NBC reported that the organisation said.The US launched an air assault on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias, in an opening salvo of retaliation for the drone strike that killed three US service members in Jordan last weekend, officials have told Associated Press.The initial strikes by manned and unmanned aircraft were hitting command and control headquarters, ammunition storage and other facilities, according to AP.US officials have told Reuters that the strikes targeted facilities linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the militias it backs.The US has begun a wave of retaliatory airstrikes targeting militants in Iraq and Syria, according to reports, in response to a drone attack in northern Jordan which killed three American service personnel and wounded dozens more.The strikes, reported by Associated Press and Reuters, come as Joe Biden joined grieving families at Dover air force base in Delaware on Friday as they honored the three US military personnel killed in the drone attack in Jordan last weekend.The attack on Tower 22 was the first deadly strike against US troops since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October.Responsibility was claimed by the Iranian-backed umbrella group Islamic Resistance, and the US has made no attempt to disguise its belief that Iran was ultimately responsible. Tehran has insisted it had nothing to do with the attack.Biden told reporters earlier this week that he held Iran responsible “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons” to Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful member of the Islamic Resistance group. However, the president added:
      I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for. More

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      ‘You singled us out’: women accuse Biden-Harris staff of Islamophobia for barring them from event

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      Two women have accused Biden-Harris campaign staffers of Islamophobia, claiming they were profiled and disinvited from a campaign event because they were wearing hijabs.Staff with the campaign have since countered that the women were barred after disrupting other events held by Democratic leaders.The incident was captured on video and shared to X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday by an account named Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation.The viral video, which has garnered over 2m views, shows an unidentified staffer for the Get the Vote Out event in Las Vegas on Saturday telling the women that they are not allowed to enter the venue.“We are choosing who’s going in and out of the event. I’m sorry,” the staffer said.Off camera, one woman responds: “Why are you choosing us not to go in when we have an invite?”A separate woman, also off camera, says: “You specifically singled us out.”The women then accuse the staffer of being “racist” and asks if they were prevented from attending because they are wearing hijabs.As the women and the staffer talk, the staffer allows others to enter the event venue.“They’re disinviting us because we have hijabs on our heads. That’s why,” one woman shouts to attendees as they enter the venue.When a separate attendee asks the staffer if the women can enter, he says: “No, I’m sorry.”Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation accused the Biden-Harris campaign of “explicitly turning away Muslim constituents from attending campaign events” in a statement shared to X.“It is shameful to see the Biden-Harris staff and [Nevada] Dems staff use post-9/11 racist tactics to target Muslims and Arab Americans in 2024,” the group said in a statement.A spokesperson with the Biden-Harris campaign said that the women were specifically barred after staff discovered that they had disrupted previous events with Democratic lawmakers.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“These individuals were among the group of people not allowed to attend Saturday’s event after previously disrupting and shutting down events with Democratic elected officials,” Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for the campaign, said in a statement shared to X.A spokesperson with the Clark County Democrats in Nevada forwarded the Biden-Harris campaign’s response to the Guardian when asked for comment.A source close to the Biden-Harris campaign added that the women had previously protested during a speech by the Nevada senator Jacky Rosen earlier this month.After being disinvited from Saturday’s event, the women reportedly continued to protest across the street from the event, the source added.The government affairs director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), Robert McCaw, said in a statement issued on Tuesday that “the American people deserve to know whether these women were profiled and barred from an event featuring Vice President Harris because they were visibly Muslim”.“Throughout her term, Vice President Harris has been respectful in her interactions with American Muslims, even during a time of intense disagreement. We encourage Vice President Harris to take appropriate action to address this apparent incident of profiling,” he added.Harris was notably in attendance at the event on Saturday.Also on Tuesday, Cair released new civil rights data showing that it has received 3,578 complaints in just the last three months of 2023 – marking a 178% increase in complaints compared to a similar period the previous year. More

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      AOC says no one should be ‘tossed out of public discourse’ for accusing Israel of genocide

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday declined to join critics who accuse Israel of genocide in its actions in Gaza, but said American society should not “toss someone out of our public discourse” for doing so.Following the International Court of Justice’s order to Israel to work to prevent genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza, the Democratic representative from New York argued on Meet the Press that “large amounts of Americans” think “genocide” is the right term for what is happening in Gaza.“The fact that [the ICJ] said there’s a responsibility to prevent it, the fact that this word is even in play, the fact that this word is even in our discourse, I think demonstrates the mass inhumanity that Gazans are facing,” she said.“Whether you are an individual that believes this is a genocide – which by the way, in our polling we are seeing large amounts of Americans concerned specifically with that word. So I don’t think that it is something to completely toss someone out of our public discourse for using.”Ocasio-Cortez has condemned Hamas’s attack on 7 October “in the strongest possible terms” and has at the same time been a vocal proponent of a ceasefire in Gaza, where the Israeli military has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.“We are not just seeing 25,000 people that have died in Gaza,” she said. “We are seeing the starvation of millions of people, the displacement of over 2 million Gazans.”Some of Ocasio-Cortez’s allies in Congress, such as the progressive Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, have gone further, arguing that Joe Biden is supporting genocide in Gaza. Asked to respond, Ocasio-Cortez said: “I think what we are seeing right now throughout the country is that young people are appalled at the violence and the indiscriminate loss of life.”On the Democrats’ policy agenda and messaging, she argued that the party “can certainly do more to be advancing our vision” but added: “I believe we have a strong vision that we can run on.” She praised Biden for his promise to enshrine reproductive rights in law should he remain president and Democrats take hold of both chambers of Congress, and affirmed that Biden is the strongest candidate among current Democratic political leaders to defeat Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.“I think we can do more,” she added. “I think we need to be talking more about healthcare. Of course me, as a progressive, I want to see the age of Medicare drop – whether it’s to 50 [years old] as the president has discussed earlier, or to zero, as is my preference.” More

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      US insists it’s trying to get aid into Gaza as UN warns millions ‘at risk of famine’

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      The US claims it is working “relentlessly” to get humanitarian aid into Gaza amid UN warnings that the territory’s 2.2 million people are “highly food insecure and at risk of famine”.Antony Blinken, speaking at Davos this week, called the situation in Gaza “gut-wrenching”. But the US secretary of state was unable to secure any major new gains on increasing the amount of assistance entering the territory during his recent visit to Israel, even as leaders of international organizations advocate for urgent access.United Nations special rapporteurs said this week that “every single person in Gaza is hungry” and that “Israel is destroying Gaza’s food system and using food as a weapon against the Palestinian people”. Israeli inspections have slowed the aid entering the territory, which is receiving just a tiny fraction of what experts say is needed.After months of backroom advocacy with Israel to increase the flow of food and humanitarian items through the south of Gaza, the US is “focused on trying to see what we can do to increase the volume and the speed with which those trucks are getting in”, according to the White House spokesperson John Kirby.Israel has allowed just under 8,500 trucks to enter Gaza through the two southern crossings over the past 85 days, according to the UN’s monitoring – an average of 100 trucks a day. Aid groups say 500 trucks a day are needed at minimum. “Everyone understands the need for inspections, but things like antibiotics or tent poles or sleeping bags with zippers are causing delay and rejection, and then the whole trucks – not just the items in question – are turned away,” Tom Hart, the CEO of the humanitarian group InterAction, said.“We need approval and inspection processes for aid to be faster and more efficient and more predictable,” Ricardo Pires, a communications manager with Unicef, said.The Biden administration credited its pressure on Israel for what has got into Gaza so far. “Despite the fact that what’s getting in isn’t sufficient to the needs right now, it is the United States that got anything in, in the first place,” Matt Miller, the state department spokesperson, has said.Some aid groups see things differently. “We know that they are doing a lot behind the scenes, but at the moment we are not seeing the results of what they are doing in the access and distribution of assistance on the ground,” Hart said.David Satterfield, the retired ambassador working as a state department humanitarian envoy focused on Gaza, has faced criticism for his effectiveness in the role. He joined Blinken on part of his recent Israel trip, though Satterfield had previously been on vacation and working remotely in Hawaii, where he owns property, over the holidays. “This was a long-planned vacation that was coordinated, and he immediately went back to Israel after that,” a state department spokesperson told the Guardian.“People in Gaza risk dying of hunger just miles from trucks filled with food,” Cindy McCain, executive director of the WFP, said in a statement. “Every hour lost puts countless lives at risk. We can keep famine at bay but only if we can deliver sufficient supplies and have safe access to everyone in need, wherever they are.”Some legislators have called on the Biden administration to do more, though a Senate vote which would require additional safeguards on aid to Israel only garnered 11 votes on Tuesday night, nowhere near the simple majority needed in the 100-person chamber to pass.Senator Chris Van Hollen voted in favor of the resolution, which was introduced by Bernie Sanders, after visiting the Rafah crossing that borders Egypt earlier in the month. Van Hollen called the Israeli government’s delays in inspecting trucks “purely arbitrary” in an interview with the New Yorker.An Israeli military spokesperson recently denied outright that there is hunger in Gaza, even as Human Rights Watch said last month that “the Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”.In the absence of a ceasefire, it’s not clear whether a large influx of humanitarian aid could even be distributed effectively. The issue is not just getting into Gaza, but the safety and logistics once inside the territory. Electricity and communications blackouts, along with Israeli bombardments, make distribution dangerous and at times impossible. It’s likely in part for these reasons that the heads of the World Food Programme and Unicef, both of which were appointed to those roles by Joe Biden, have called for a ceasefire.But experts say that the US is more focused on the humanitarian crisis than the underlying political and military roots of the conflict. “They are in the weeds on humanitarian access issues, which is still uncomfortable for the Israelis, but far preferable to questions of ceasefire and future political arrangements, and it allows Israel to nickel-and-dime the US to death on the minutiae,” Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, says.Tania Hary, executive director of the Israeli non-profit Gisha focused on movement and access for Palestinians, says that Israel is facing more pressure to let more goods into Gaza in part because of South Africa’s international court of justice case at the Hague. But she added, “I don’t think that they’re doing enough or that they’re moving fast enough, and they’re not even skimming the surface of their obligations to Gaza residents.”The US has found some creative pathways in its humanitarian efforts, including getting Israel to reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing on the southern Israel-Gaza border in mid-December. But in Hary’s assessment, those actions remain wholly insufficient. “We’re never going to see these needs being addressed without there being a ceasefire, and the US is of course not calling for that. So whatever it is trying to do on access for aid is undermined by support for the continued military operation,” she said.Kirby, the White House spokesperson, acknowledged that “a big hindrance” to getting more humanitarian items into Gaza “is the fighting itself”.Though the US Senate failed to pass the measure to condition military aid to Israel based on the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, advocates say there are other means available to the US within that law. For example, it contains a clause that bars security assistance when the recipient country “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance”, a point that a consortium of NGOs highlighted in a recent letter to the US defense secretary.“Israel as the occupying power and a side to the hostilities has obligations, not just to facilitate entry of goods but even to supply them,” Hary says. “And almost no one is talking about Israel supplying the food that Gaza needs, but that is its obligation.” More

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      Senate votes against Sanders resolution to force human rights scrutiny over Israel aid

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      US senators have defeated a measure, introduced by Bernie Sanders, that would have made military aid to Israel conditional on whether the Israeli government is violating human rights and international accords in its devastating war in Gaza.A majority of senators struck down the proposal on Tuesday evening, with 72 voting to kill the measure, and 11 supporting it. Although Sanders’ effort was easily defeated, it was a notable test that reflected growing unease among Democrats over US support for Israel.The measure was a first-of-its-kind tapping into a decades-old law that would require the US state department to, within 30 days, produce a report on whether the Israeli war effort in Gaza is violating human rights and international accords. If the administration failed to do so, US military aid to Israel, long assured without question, could be quickly halted.It is one of several that progressives have proposed to raise concerns over Israel’s attacks on Gaza, where the Palestinian death toll has surpassed 24,000 and Israel’s bombardment since Hamas launched attacks on it on 7 October has displaced most of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents.“We must ensure that US aid is being used in accordance with human rights and our own laws,” Sanders said in a speech before the vote urging support for the resolution, lamenting what he described as the Senate’s failure to consider any measure looking at the war’s effect on civilians.The White House had said it opposed the resolution. The US gives Israel $3.8bn in security assistance each year, ranging from fighter jets to powerful bombs that could destroy Hamas tunnels. Biden has asked Congress to approve an additional $14bn.The measure that Sanders proposed uses a mechanism in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which Congress to provide oversight of US military assistance, that must be used in accordance with international human rights agreements.The measure faced an uphill battle. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress oppose any conditions on aid to Israel, and Joe Biden has staunchly stood by Israel throughout its campaign in Gaza, leaving Sanders with an uphill battle. But by forcing senators to vote on the record about whether they were willing to condition aid to Israel, Sanders and others lawmakers sparked debate on the matter.The 11 senators who supported Sanders in the procedural vote were mostly Democrats from across the party’s spectrum.Some lawmakers have increasingly pushed to place conditions on aid to Israel, which has drawn international criticism for its offensive in Gaza.“To my mind, Israel has the absolute right to defend itself from Hamas’s barbaric terrorist attack on October 7, no question about that,” Sanders told the Associated Press in an interview ahead of the vote.“But what Israel does not have a right to do – using military assistance from the United States – does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people,” said Sanders. “And in my view, that’s what has been happening.”Amid anti-war protests across the US, progressive representatives including Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Barbara Lee and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have called for a ceasefire. In a letter to the US president, many of these lawmakers stressed that thousands of children had been killed in the Israeli bombings.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking from the Republican side before the measure was introduced on Tuesday evening, South Carolina senator Lindsay Graham said that Hamas, the Islamist group, has “militarized” schools and hospitals in the territory by operating amongst them.Israel has blamed Hamas for using hospitals as cover for military purposes, but has not provided definitive proof backing its claims that Hamas kept a “command center” under Gaza’s main al-Shifa hospital, which the Israeli Defense Forces raided in November.Two thirds of Gaza’s hospitals have been closed amidst what Biden has characterized as “indiscriminate bombings”, during a time of acute need, where United Nations agencies are warning of famine and disease as Gaza is besieged by Israel.Despite the defeat, organizations that had supported Sanders’ effort saw it as something of a victory.“The status quo in the Senate for decades has been 100% support for Israel’s military, 100% of the time from 100% of the Senate,” said Andrew O’Neill, the legislative director of Indivisible, one of the groups that backed the measure. “The fact that Sanders introduced this bill was already historic. That ten colleagues joined him is frankly remarkable.”The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      A skirt served my grandfather well in the first world war | Brief letters

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      Re your letters about men’s skirts (12 January), I am proud to say that my grandfather fought his way through the whole of the first world war wearing a khaki skirt. As a soldier he was part of the London Scottish regiment fighting in the trenches. Furthermore, it is said that his fellow soldiers told that he shaved every day.Mary TippettsBristol It’s useful to get a clear sight of what really matters to the UK and US governments. The prompt military action against Houthis in Yemen (Report, 11 January) shows clearly that any threat to global trade and the smooth running of capitalism is far more important than meaningful action to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza.Norman MillerBrighton I agree with the first eight reasons (Yes, it’s cold, it’s wet and it’s dark – but here are nine reasons to love January, 14 January), but I take issue with number nine: “It really can’t get any worse.” What about February?Geoff SmithEndon, Staffordshire Re dramas that have changed history (Letters, 14 January), Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was allegedly greeted by Abraham Lincoln during the American civil war with the words: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”Tom StubbsLondon What’s all this about men in their 70s wearing underpants (Letters, 14 January)? Gosh, I must try it sometime.Toby WoodPeterborough More